Just two Chinese ISPs serve 20% of world broadband users

The two largest Internet providers in the world are Chinese. Last year, each …

If you need a reminder of just how big China is—and just how important the Internet has become there—consider this stat: between them, two Chinese ISPs serve 20 percent of all broadband subscribers in the entire world.

Telegeography has updated its world Internet service provider database and finds that the sheer scale of China dwarfs just about everyone else. China Telecom is the largest ISP in the world, with 55 million subscibers. Second is China Unicom, with just over 40 million.

And both companies continue to grow, even as growth slows significantly in more developed markets. Telegeography notes that each Chinese firm added nine million users in the last year—"equivalent to the entire broadband subscriber base of Verizon."

Data source: Telegeography

Every other ISP trails dramatically. Japan's NTT comes in third with 17 million subscribers, and all US providers are smaller still.

"The gap between the top two operators and the world’s remaining broadband service providers will continue to grow rapidly," said TeleGeography Research Director Tania Harvey. "Aside from the two Chinese companies, all of the top ten broadband ISPs operate in mature markets, with high levels of broadband penetration and rapidly slowing subscriber growth."